Request for reuse tool info

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-- Bucky Ransdell posted the following recently; reply at end

From: wgr@rti.org (Bucky Ransdell)
Subject: Request for reuse tool info
Message-ID: <1992Dec1.152321.29538@rti.rti.org>
Sender: wgr@rti.rti.org
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 92 15:23:21 GMT

I am investigating tools supporting software reuse.  I'm interested in both
tools targeted specifically at reuse and software engineering environments
that support it as part of the larger development process.  The key feature
for my purposes is a repository for software assets supporting classification
schemes for archiving, organizing, and retrieving reusable components.

I'd very much appreciate getting any information you have on this subject,
including summaries of capabilities, product and company names and addresses,
personal opinions, and pricing information.  Please e-mail this information
to me at

wgr@rti.rti.org

I will gladly post a summary of the collected information if it would be
of interest.

If this topic has already been discussed in this newsgroup, maybe someone
can send me a summary of what was learned.  I'd also like to know if there's
another newsgroup that is a more appropriate forum for this request.

Thanks a lot.

Bucky Ransdell

-------------------------------

The STARS Program (under DARPA) has been developing and integrating reuse
tools into software engineering environments so as to support a
process-driven, domain-specific reuse based approach to the development of
software intensive systems.

At least as important than tools, STARS has also defined a conceptual
framework for reuse processes, defined several processes that facilitate
domain specific reuse, e.g., domain analysis, reusable asset evaluation, reuse
spiral life cycle process, etc, and  worked to describe the
inter-relationships between doamin engineering and application engineering
from a reuse context.

The three STARS prime contractors are integrating reuse library tools into
development environments.
  * Boeing is providing a reuse library capability as an extension
    of the DEC Cohesion product, which provides an object oriented framework.
    This tightly integrated reuse library mechanism inherits the
    framework's multi-user client/server model and user interface and 
    provides flexible asset classification and retrieval capabilities.
  * IBM is integrating a commercial library product, Inquisix, developed by
    SPS, into its environment.  This product
    supports multiple classification and indexing schemes.
  * Paramax has developed the knowledge-based Reuse Library Framework (RLF)
    capability, which supports capture of a domain model and reusable assets
    in a semantic net and associated rule base.

Through our technology transition program, these tools and the conceptual
underpinnings are being evaluated and refined by volunteer contributors from
the DoD contractor community, industry, and academia.

All of these library tools are tailorable to satisfy organizational and/or
domain needs.  They also allow integration of other tools to enable additional
processing over that supported by the library tools. e.g., display of design
diagrams by the generating tool, extraction of components for test, exchange
etc.

These tools and other STARS products, as well as commercially related
activities are being demonstrated at the STARS'92 Conference December 8-10,
1992 at the Omni-Shoreham Hotel, Washington DC.  The conference program has
been previously posted; included in the Reuse track are presentations on the
STARS Reuse program, the conceptual framework mentioned above, software
architectures and other reuse work in the DoD.

Further information about STARS reuse activities (conceptual basis and
tooling) can be obtained from:

Teri Payton
  STARS reuse system architect
  Internet:  payton@stars.ballston.paramax.com
  Telephone: 703-351-5308 
  
Marlene Hazle
   Internet:  HAZLE@MITRE.ORG 
   Telephone: 617 271 2192
  
-----------------------------------

John Foreman
STARS Program Manager
jtf@dc.sei.cmu.edu



John Foreman                       jtf@sei.cmu.edu
Software Engineering Institute     (412) 268-6417
Pittsburg, pa